


Songs For The Dead

by darlathecyborgpluviophile



Series: I Suffer(ed) From The Birdcage Syndrome [7]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Anal Sex, Bad Touch Chancellor, Episode Prompto, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Intrusive Thoughts, M/M, MT!Prompto, Mid-Pieces, Objectification, POV Second Person, Posessive Behavior, Rape, a tiny glimmer of hope, it's there I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12755151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlathecyborgpluviophile/pseuds/darlathecyborgpluviophile
Summary: Prompto braves snow, unsettling revelations, and his worst fear to get back to the people he loves.(A take on Episode Prompto.)





	Songs For The Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you SO SO much to invisibledeity for helping me whip this into better shape; as always, your help is very much appreciated and taken to heart.
> 
> Title is a lyric from the Circe Link song "Notes From The Madhouse".

Why bother continuing?

It's cold. Your legs are blocks of ice, after hours and hours of trudging. The extremities that don't hurt, you can't feel at all. You're exhausted, you just want some warmth, to lie down, some sort of respite.

If you continue, one of two people is going to find you. You're not sure which would be the better option at this point. You haven't felt fear like this since Altissia.

If he were to find you now...

Your legs give out and you collapse, letting the blizzard rage around you.

You take back your prior thought; whatever Noctis might dish out, Ardyn would always be the worse choice.

Snow presses in, all around. It's a miracle that you manage to see the MTs closing in on your location, and have the opportunity to black out before you can feel what they do to you.

  
******

  
Luckily, you know the facility you wake in like the back of your hand.

It's damn near meditative, running through these gleaming halls again, collecting what weapons and ammunition you can get your hands on. This time, you get to wreck the godsforsaken place, and you couldn't be more excited.

 _Boom_. Two more nodes gone.

 _Snap_. One more MT out of the way.

 _Bang, bang, bang._ Another wave of enemies eliminated.

Causing this chaos feels like second nature. It feels good, the energy thrumming through your veins, turning your raw fear into something useful. It pushes everything you don't want to think about firmly to the back of your head, the sting of Noctis's betrayal, the visceral fear of Ardyn shoving you your new gun, whispering _do have fun._

All that exists is your boots on the linoleum, the satisfying kickback of your various firearms, and the body count as it climbs.

You hang a left down a white hallway, and find it's oddly familiar, more familiar than even the rest of the facility has been. You slow your pace to investigate—have you gone in a circle?—when you see it.

The Records Library. Soft yellow light spills out of it, the door slightly ajar.

It somehow looks worse than when you were last in it, which means it can't have changed much. You run into the semi-circle of metal shelving, searching for your topic of interest.

You were right; the MT Cloning Reports are exactly where you remember.

You inhale the musty air, and rip file folders off the shelf in urgency. You skim through dozens, hundreds, searching for anything of note. The first one that catches your eye is labelled Cloning Reports: Originals, with the numbers scrawled beneath it being 01500-02000.

Ardyn's words from when you first met him echo in your head.

_"Besithia tells me you're one of the originals. Is this true?"_

You had said yes, albeit uncertainly. Now it's confirmed.

You flip through folders and folders of MT Profiles, on the way to yours.

_NH-01510, decommissioned due to attempted treason._

_NH-01678, decommissioned due to poor reaction to desensitization._

_NH-01700—01900, terminated upon birth due to widespread defects in the batch._

_NH-01964, decommissioned due to poor reaction to Scourge._

Scourge?

You look up from the folder you have open and towards the section of shelving labeled Scourge a little ways down. You walk over and pull a handful of those folders into your lap to look over in a few minutes.

_NH-01984..._

_85..._

_86..._

_NH-01987._

Your fingers trip over themselves to open the folder.

_NH-01987, decommissioned due to developmental defects._

Then, scribbled to the side in red marker:

_Permanently reassigned to Chancellor Ardyn Izunia, per request. Unit failed melee training, and did not undergo Scourge Therapy._

What the hell?

You flip through the folders retrieved from the Scourge shelf, looking for any mention of Scourge Therapy.

When you do find the information, you feel like you're going to be sick.

"They're...putting daemon blood in us," you say out loud. A hand finds its way up to your mouth.

An MT that successfully undergoes training receives Scourge Therapy, essentially becoming a daemon in armor. They don't clone you to become perfect infantrymen; they clone you so they can manipulate the Starscourge to their will, no matter the sacrifices.

Your mind is sent reeling.

The training. The beatings. The discipline. It doesn't really mean anything, in the end.

You look back towards your file.

_Permanently reassigned to Chancellor Ardyn Izunia, per request._

_Did not undergo Scourge Therapy._

Not only did Ardyn save you from decommissioning, he allowed you to keep your barest shreds of humanity.

All so you could be his whore.

The folders slip out of your hands. They clatter to the floor, and you run from the room as fast as you can. You barely pay attention to the next few hallways you go through, you just want to get out, get away from your thoughts, get _free—_

But a glimpse of blood red gives you pause.

You duck into a roll, and curl up beneath a nearby series of control panels. You crane your head up and look through windows into the adjacent room without the men inside noticing your presence.

Ardyn is indeed there, layers of clothing swishing around as he walks. He talks with a man you haven't seen in years—Verstael Besithia.

You settle far beneath the control panels, and spy on what you can of their conversation.

Ardyn takes a breath in.

"Do you remember my MT bodyguard?"

Besithia scowls.

"The one the Lucian King convinced to join his posse? Ugh. Yes, I remember."

"It was certainly one of my very favorite gifts from you. The way it performed, always squirming so deliciously underneath me...well. I'm sure you understand."

Besithia's eyes wander to nearby cloning tubes. He says nothing. Ardyn continues.

"What if I told you it was back, and wandering through this very facility? Though defective, it was one of your original children, was it not?"

"They aren't my children. I've asked you to stop referring to them as such."

"Ah, but that's really the only appropriate term, isn't it? They weren't created from whole cloth, after all."

Besithia sneers, and changes the subject. "It's here, you say?"

"And closer than you think, may I add."

Ardyn sweeps an arm towards the window nearest your hiding spot.

"Oh, 01987! Be a dear and come show your _only_ family the proper respect, hm?"

A bitter cold sweeps through your veins, worse than the chill that got you here in the first place.

Luckily, Ardyn doesn't press. You crawl out of view of the window, and when you glance back to it you find Besithia alone in the circular room.

There doesn't seem to be another way out of here, besides meeting your maker.

You walk to the next room, and lean against a vending machine to calm yourself down.

Breathe in for five.

 _At least Ardyn's not in there anymore,_ you try to rationalize.

Hold for five.

_At least he's not waiting for me._

Breathe out for seven.

You pull your gun out of its sleeve, and go to confront Besithia.

The doors to his chamber hiss open and there he stands, back facing you. Something crawls up his right side, purple and black. The substance—Scourge?— seems to have a mind of its own, arcing and twisting and eating away at the parts of him that still appear human.

He turns, and smiles at you with rotting, mangled teeth.

"So, you truly have decided to return to Niflheim. Heh. Izunia would no doubt refer to you as my 'prodigal son.'"

You lift your gun higher to make it clear where you stand with him, but it's hard with how badly your hands shake. The viscous purple and black that crawls up him makes it hard to concentrate. You can't believe this could have been you...

"What?" he says, catching onto your hesitation. "Have you never seen a man turn before?"

His right arm flies up into the air, clutching at what's left of his forehead. He outright giggles.

"No. Of course you haven't. You were a failure of a unit, as were most of the other originals. But you—"

He staggers towards you.

"You were given a second life."

He raises a hand—almost entirely black at this point—towards your face. By instinct, you freeze up and comply as he strokes your cheek.

"I see why he was so obsessed with you." He coughs, wet and nasty sounding. "You're a beautiful specimen. Most of them were. I'm sure you made a wonderful fucktoy."

You come to yourself, summoning the strength to whack his hand away and replace the gun between you.

"I'm not a toy," you say through clenched teeth. "I'm not. I'm...I'm Prompto."

Besithia full on laughs this time, harsh like the blizzard outside.

"You deluded thing. You're an object, a means to an end, and you always have been."

You try to move out of his path but he latches onto you, pressing you against a nearby wall.

"You're worthless. A failure. You're lucky," he wheezes, interrupting himself, "you're lucky Izunia so graciously offered you sanctuary in return for his pleasure. You'd be dead if not for your owner."

"I'm—I'm a person—"

"No. You're property. You must understand," his hands move to your neck, "that you always will be—"

"Stop it!"

You fumble to fire the gun. A shot rings out around you, and Besithia crumples at your feet.

You stand over his melting and bubbling corpse, shaking like you never have before. The familiar voice of the facility's female announcer begins to blare, and the ground rumbles, but both events are undercut by a voice you're truly intimate with.

_"Betrayed by those it thought it could trust, its only human relative felled by its own hand! Oh, the story would be a tragedy for the ages...but there is hope yet."_

You slam your hands over your ears, but Ardyn's voice oozes through the gaps in your fingers.

_"I can think of one last person who would gladly accept you back, dearest."_

The shaking ground gets worse, and in an instant something falls through the ceiling.

When the dust clears, Aranea is there. She yanks her spear out of the daemon she's killed and looks up, finding you staring at her.

You don't think she was who Ardyn was referring to, but her timing is impeccable. She steps down from the corpse of the iron giant, walking towards you at a brisk pace.

"What happened to defecting?" she grumbles.

"Aranea? How—"

"Save it, blondie. On your feet."

Despite the subtle urgency layered into her monotone, you can't bring yourself to stand. The most you can do is pull your gun into your lap.

You stare at the cloning tubes and swirling metal structure in front of you. Your vision begins to blur, and your sensations slowly deaden until Aranea snaps her fingers in front of your face.

"I know you don't like to be touched, kid, but I am seconds away from pulling your sorry ass up myself."

Her tone leaves no room for compromise, so you shake yourself out of it and rise to a standing position. Having dealt with the matter of your getting up, she strides to a nearby work desk and leafs through the papers strewn there.

"So this is the new model they were talking about," she says, pulling out a sheet of schematics.

You stand behind her, awkwardly. She catches you staring over her shoulder, and throws the paper back down.

"You," she points towards you, "need to get going."

You realize there are tears in your eyes, and tracks on your face. When did you start crying?

You shake your head.

"But I—"

"Chancellor's after you, right? Daemons are tearing this place apart? You need to leave."

She shoves a map from her coat pocket towards you.

"Meet me there," she says, and walks back to look through the hole she came out of.

"But, what about—"

"Just do it!" she shouts, and jumps out of your sight.

You look back down, and find the ground around you bubbling purple and black like Besithia had been.

You swallow.

You grip the handle of your gun.

You run.

  
******

  
Potions are still an unfamiliar feeling.

The luminescent liquid pours over your barcode, and it reminds you of regaining sensation after being tied up. There's a tingling, and something like pain as the skin rebuilds itself a bit lighter than it used to be.

Aranea sits to your left, leaving you enough room to be comfortable. She gives you what you think is an annoyed look, then breathes out through her teeth.

You don't want to sit here in the chill, with a meager fire and snarky ex-coworker to keep you company. You want to get up, you want to stop thinking, you want to satisfy the urge to destroy what threatens to destroy you.

But Aranea says, "I ran into your buddies in Tenebrae," and every bit of desperate rage melts away like the frost on your coat. You sag under the weight of the words, relieving though they should be.

You give a sorry glance her way.

"You've got 'em worried sick."

You look down at your lap. Your eyes catch on the jagged burn scar that now frames your barcode, and you swallow the bile in the back of your throat.

_Branded for life._

Aranea leans forward, arching an eyebrow.

"You gonna go see 'em, or what?"

See Noctis and the others? After what happened?

Your eyes dart to her to check she's serious. She is.

"I-I can't," you reply, "I...can't. I'm a failed MT. I'm...Ardyn's property." You blink quickly, not giving the tears a chance to slip out. "The only reason I was made was to hurt people, and when that didn't work, it was to be his..."

You're not finishing that.

"I'm not even a real person. How could they want me?"

Aranea shakes her head, and fixes you with a smirk.

"In case you forgot, I've done my fair share of hurting people, especially them. Your princely pal and I haven't always been on such friendly terms either. But you know what? He put that aside back there and asked me to make sure _you_ were safe."

For the first time in the conversation, you hold her gaze. She shrugs.

"Maybe he's just naturally trusting like that, I don't know."

"He...did?"

She scoffs. "Think he'd do that for someone who's 'not a real person?'"

You're unsure how to counter that.

 _The train,_ you think, _he pushed you off the train, why would he attack you and push you off the train only to send Aranea to find you—_

Gods, it makes no sense. You don't want to think about it, you don't want to deal with any of this anymore. You stare into the fire, willing this whole damn situation to go up like the flames.

Aranea, at last, stands.

"Look—I can tell you want to get back together with them. So why _not_ let them know?"

You roll your eyes, still forcing your tears of self-hatred back.

"You really think they'd let me back? It's not my place to be with them."

You resolve to glare at her, but it tumbles into a weak frown at your boots.

"And even if they did let me back, I don't know what I'm going to have to go through to get there. Ardyn's after me _right now._ I don't know how I could live with myself, if they got hurt protecting me from what I'm meant to be..."

Aranea growls, and it echoes throughout the overhang.

"Because you're doing such a good job of living with yourself now."

She steps closer, an unmistakable fire in her eyes. You scramble back against the frozen haven walls, waiting for her to climb on top of you, hold you down—

None of that happens. What she does do is summon her spear and hold it centimeters away from your chin.

"What _do_ you want, then? We all know what happened. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Ardyn was fucking you. But you can't let the past rule you like that. It's hard, and it's tough to get through, but if you just let go of your fear and stop to think for a godsdamn _second_ about what you have to gain by reuniting with them, maybe you'll find something."

The frustration in her eyes grows thoughtful, almost sad. You notice this, even with your sight trained on the spear.

It disappears in a shower of red, and Aranea walks to the mouth of the overhang.

"I'm going after that new model in the morning. You're on your own now, kid."

She doesn't give you a second glance as she walks out into the snow beyond.

  
******

  
Morning isn't much better.

The snowmobile you stole from the facility gives out halfway through your meandering, and you're forced to trudge yet again through worsening weather. It's a monotonous process, but it gives you something to do. Struggling through the snow and unforgiving terrain takes your mind off the fear that gnaws at the edges of your consciousness, and for that, you're grateful.

That is, until you're thrust into blackness.

It's like the sun itself has gone out, doused like the campfire you made the night prior. You look up through the canopy of trees above you, and find that not even the stars are twinkling.

All that exists is pervasive night.

You blink.

Noctis is suddenly there, too. Your heart starts beating much too fast upon seeing him.

"N...noctis...?"

He lifts his head up, looking at you with eyes of sparkling gold. He flings a hand to the side, and with a shimmer of blue an ornate blade appears.

You scramble backwards, only to trip on a fallen branch. When you go to pull yourself up, you find yourself in the uncomfortable embrace of your MT armor.

Oh, gods, no.

Noctis swings at you with a grunt of exertion, and you barely manage to roll out of his way. You clatter to your feet, and you run. Panic sweeps through your system, and you find it hard to keep up any semblance of steady breathing. The metal of your armor digs into your sides, your legs, your arms, feeling far too similar to Ardyn's hands pressing down on you.

It's too much. Your legs give out, and Noctis warps to your position. You put an arm up in some feeble attempt to block the sword before it falls, and catch a glimpse of a look that makes your skin crawl.

This is how it ends; worn down, back in this wretched armor, sliced to shreds by someone who you used to consider a friend.

You close your eyes and anticipate the finality of death.

_Woof!_

That's...not how you expected death to sound.

When you open your eyes, you're no longer in the strange, empty night. You look at your body, and find you're dressed in the tundra gear you scrounged up from the Armiger.

You lay a hand to your forehead, and sit up more.

 _Thank the Six,_ you think. _Thank the gods that wasn't real._

You suck in lungfuls of air, and take in your true surroundings.

The sun is back in its proper place. You lie bathed in light, collapsed in a blanket of fresh snow.

Not a meter away sits a dog.

Its coat matches the environment; a pristine, untouched white. Its black eyes glitter with amusement, and it pants playfully, tongue bobbing in and out of its mouth.

It barks again, and a distinct thought cuts through your confusion: _follow me._

You do.

The dog zig-zags through mercifully flat ground and the beginnings of a forest. It never walks too fast for you, yet you get the distinct impression it's in a hurry.

The two of you reach a clearing, this time filled with decrepit MTs left out to die. Some still twitch when the dog leads you past them, and you recoil at the sight.

At the far end of the clearing, facing away from yourself and the dying MTs, stands a human.

His blonde hair pokes up at unnatural angles, a bit like how you remember a chocobo looks. He wears a time-worn vest, ripped and patched and ripped again, with plain cargo pants and boots to match.

You slow to a stop so you can look at him, but the dog marches on past. It sits at the human's left side, and as he crouches down to greet the animal, you realize—

That's... _you_.

That's your unruly blonde hair. Those are your eyes, crystalline blue, your laugh as you say the words, "Hey there, girl," and your scarred, calloused hands as you run them through the dog's coat.

You stare at the human-you until he notices your presence, and twists into a standing position.

"Hey."

He lifts a hand in greeting. You echo it uncertainly.

He says nothing more, but you draw closer. Your steps are unsteady; you're intimately aware of how much your legs shake.

From a closer vantage, you spot more details about him—unfamiliar ones.

His barcode is out in the open, firstly. His left wrist is covered in bracelets and wristbands of all kinds, but here he is sporting the brand like it's nothing. Almost like it's something to be _proud_ of.

Secondly, he has an awful beard—a goatee, you think it's called—dead in the center of his chin. Above it he's smiling, not quite free and easy but sincerely, with care obvious in the way his lips quirk up.

Worst of all, familiar scars and freckles dust his face, shoulders, and neck, but mixed in are many that you don't recognize. Two in particular rest across the bridge of his nose and perpendicular to his left eye. You definitely don't have those at the moment.

Your stomach sinks, as do you. The snow crunches under your knees as you land. You look up and _force the tears down, force the tears down, MTs don't cry..._

Functional, normal, daemon-infused MTs don't cry. You do.

You scrub at your face, babbling apologies. A hand presses down on your shoulder, warm and gentle and still, you jerk away.

Human-you's eyes seem to bore into your own. He retracts his hand, but the sympathy never leaves his face.

"Hey, it's okay. No one's gonna hurt you here."

"Who are you?" you rasp.

"I think that's pretty obvious, dude."

You look at your thighs. This can't be you. It can't. Sure, he's human, and something like happy, it seems, but all those extra scars, the things you've yet to live through...

"I'm...I'm sorry," you say, and splay your fingers across your face.

"It's okay. Really. This isn't your fault."

"I'm-I'm-I'm so scared," you admit. You don't know where the stuttered words come from, but once they start they don't stop. "I don't want to be hurt anymore, I don't want to do this, I don't want to be _his property_ but I'm too scared to find Noctis again, I just...I can't..."

Human-you makes a humming noise.

"Can I touch you?"

You sniffle. You bring your hands to your sides, and nod.

Human-you places a hand in your hair. It's not harsh, and there's no tugging involved; he doesn't even thread his fingers in that much. He just places his hand on top of your head, and rustles the mop of blonde ever so slightly. It takes a few minutes of silence before he says anything else.

"It's hard," he says.

The conversation lapses back into his gentle petting and your quiet tears.

"You really do go through a lot of shit—"

"Do I," you interrupt, "I mean, does Ardyn take me back?"

Human-you looks away, and that's all the confirmation you need.

"No," you whisper, "no no no no no..."

"It's not forever," he blurts out. "Not just when Ardyn gets you back, but the whole thing."

He abandons your hair to put both his hands on your shoulders. You let him this time.

"Feeling...bad. Feeling like you're alone, like you're worthless, like you want to just—put a bullet in your head, it doesn't last forever. It's hard. It sucks. But Prompto..."

His sympathetic, caring smile blooms again, instantly slowing your ragged breathing.

"It's worth it. Going through the bullshit, the bullshit you don't deserve, you end up...okay. These old scars," he gestures to his arms, his face, "they bother me, they make me feel gross. But they don't...hurt, anymore."

He stops, and the intervening silence is deafening. Your tears have stopped, too.

"Can I hug you?" Human-you asks.

You nod, and he wraps around you. He smells like leather, like machinery and motor oil, like Noctis's cologne.

"It's going to be okay," he says as you breathe deep the unfamiliar, comforting mix of scents.

"But I'm scared."

"I know. The trick is to keep living anyway."

When you pull out of his hug, you're alone in the clearing.

  
******

  
Things had been so good.

The air had been clear. The sun was out, shining down and making the snow sparkle as you rode through it.

Maybe not—perfect, definitely not perfect. But the hallucination, dream, vision, whatever it was, had soothed you enough to reunite with Aranea and take down Immortalis. You had even, just for a second, entertained the idea of making it to Gralea successfully and meeting Noctis there.

In retrospect, you were being far too optimistic.

The room you're strapped captive in is dimly lit, but you can clearly see the outline of Ardyn standing before you, hand on his cock. He's preparing himself before he plunges into you for the—oh, you've lost count how many times.

Everything aches. Every part of your body simultaneously cries out for rest, for release from the stress position and the exertion of being fucked again and again.

Of course, you expect it when Ardyn slides inside, but that doesn't make it hurt any less. Your insides stretch and burn to accommodate for his girth, and it makes you gasp for air. Once the initial pain wears out, you honestly wonder how he can stomach doing this anymore, what with the layers of dried blood and come that surely cake your insides at this point.

Then another thought enters your mind, a realization; _he's not moving._

Ardyn presses himself against you, and the edges of his clothing catch in your half-open wounds, but that's all that happens.

He doesn't thrust, doesn't grab ahold of any particular part of your body.

It's...maddening.

Worse, you think you actually _want_ him to move.

As if in direct response to that thought, Ardyn laughs. It's by no means maniacal. If anything, it sounds soft and wondrous.

"You know, I suppose it never occurred to me that you, of all the sentient beings in the world, would be the King of Light's fourth holy companion."

Ardyn pulls back, thrumming his fingers against your bruised and broken ribcage. His words are teasing, but he says them in the same tone of his laugh, as if in awe.

"Quite fascinating how these things turn out, isn't it? The fact that a reject MT, used by the Accursed for years, could not only be such a vital cog in Eos' destiny, but an eventual comrade of its originally intended enemy?"

He stops the movement of his fingers, and instead curls his arms around your neck and the spine of the MT Repair Rig. Sighing, forlorn, he casts his eyes to the side.

"The gods are truly masters of irony."

As an experiment, you rock your hips forward. It's not much, considering how you're restrained, but it jostles his cock at least a little bit. He looks back to you with a smile that causes you to shudder.

"I suppose I should say, temporary holy companion," he says, and his usual trickster-like lilt is back. "We still don't know if he's coming to get you, do we?"

He unfolds, and trails his hands down your strained arms.

"I'd think the King of Light would be above indulging in his covetous desires."

Finally, Ardyn moves. There's no preamble; he starts off with sudden, deep thrusts that make you moan with every hit to your prostate.

It's awful. It's disgusting.

It's so, so good.

"But maybe you don't want to leave after all. You seem to be reveling in my every action. I'll gladly keep you here, you know. You need only ask."

"Don't...want this," you slur, trying not to let the pleasure get to you. "I don't want this."

"What a pity. It's quite probable this will be your life from now on."

You didn't think you had any tears left to spill, but one falls anyway.

_Not again. Please._

Ardyn looks down, tutting softly when he sees the mess your own cock is making.

"Oh, my, you _do_ want this. I know you've made a habit of it, but you really shouldn't lie to me."

He curls a fist around your length, loosely moving upwards. It's more a tease than any substantial touch, but your breathing hitches anyway. You squirm as much as you can in the rig. It feels tantalizing, so undeniably amazing, but you would give anything for him to stop.

He leans back in. He rests his chin on your shoulder as he continues the light movements, pausing every few seconds to thrust.

"I want you to remember you became hard for me. I want to sear it into your memory." He spreads his free hand over your chest, where your top rides up to reveal scarred flesh. "This is mine." He moves up to bite at your earlobe. "All mine." He gives your cock a squeeze. "Mine."

"Stop..."

"You _can_ run from it, my dear, but know it doesn't change a thing. I claimed you as my own, long ago. No matter what happens, that will always be your truth."

He starts jerking you off in earnest, timed perfectly with his thrusts. He comes soon after you do and you lie a tangled mess with him, against the machine. He plays with the ends of your hair.

The awe in his voice is back.

"Have I ever mentioned how beautiful you look, open and spent for me? It's angelic, dear."

He drags a come-sticky finger down your face, speaking in tender, dulcet tones. In another circumstance, perhaps he would sound romantic.

You almost can't hear his next words over your half panting, half sobbing.

"It's no wonder I chose you. You look nearly like my lost Aurum."

With this, he pulls his flaccid length out of you. He cleans himself up, and leaves you with circuitous thoughts.

 _You're his,_ the words echo in your head, _you're his_ , _you're his, you're his, that will always be your truth, you even liked it, you wanted it, how could you want it—_

Something interrupts the destructive pattern.

Your brain supplies you with the feeling of sun on your skin, a flash of white fur, sincere smiles framed by blonde, silver, and black, a voice saying, _'It's going to be okay.'_

You breathe in the musky, revolting smell that Ardyn's left behind, and cling to those words for dear life.

  
******

  
Noctis does come for you.

When he leaves again, it's far too soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Next one is about the WOR, and boy, do I have my work cut out for me...


End file.
